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Dessert

Cream Puffs

Cream puffs are baked pastries made from a mixture of flour, water, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Combine water and butter in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  3. Stir in one egg at a time until the mixture is smooth.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200 °C) until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Gives the paste enough structure to hold its shape while it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and their moisture turns to steam that lifts the puffs.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and melts into the boiling water.
Water
Provides the liquid that gels the starch and produces steam for rising.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool slightly before adding the eggs. If the paste is still very hot, the eggs can scramble instead of blending smoothly. Cooling slightly keeps the eggs whole so they emulsify into a smooth dough that can puff properly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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